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Day Four - Storing Your Designs
Storing your designs efficiently and in an organized manner is very important! And storing them where you can find them is even more Important! I speak from experience when I tell you that I have bought the same design more than once because I could not locate the original one on my computer. Getting organized in a way that works for you is key. There are many ways that you can store your designs and you can really make it a simple process. Choose something that is going to work for you so that you will know where to look for a particular design. I will just give you a couple of examples of how to store designs and then you can take it and run with what ever suits you best!
Example 1: On my desktop of my computer I have a folder called My Documents. You have this too. In that folder are MANY other sub folders that I have made by simply right clicking and selecting Make New Folder and then right clicking again to rename it to something I like. One of the sub folders is named Embroidery Designs (you can name it whatever you like). In this folder there are 1000's of designs! If you are an embroidery design junkie like me, then you know what I am talking about and if you are new to embroidery then you might as well just face it now that you too will be a design junkie really soon :) In my method of madness, I created more folders under the Embroidery Designs Folder and the designs are sorted by the company I purchased them from, which makes them easier for me to find when I need it again. I even go a step further and within the company folder, I have subcategories of types of designs like floral, lace, redwork, bears etc. See the above photo example. You can see that my folders are named by company where I got the design, for example, Punchwork Studio, Embroidery Library, Dakota, Ann the Gran etc etc. Trust me I have many more folders than what you see, but lets not get insane here :)
Example 2: Another option is again making a main folder named Embroidery Designs, and then this time instead of the subfolders being named by company, you can name the subfolders according to theme or category. Categories such as Transportation, Animals, Places, Redwork, Floral, FSL, In the Hoop etc. This is a quick and easy way to organize if it does not matter to you where the design came from and you just need to categorize. You can get really crazy and then make subcategories of the categories! For example, Floral is your category folder and then inside that may be even MORE subfolders for Roses, Carnations, Tulips etc...you get the idea here. The reason I use example 1 above is because in many cases if I am doing a job for a client and I am not using one of my own designs that I have digitized myself, then I need to know who did digitize the design in order to obtain permission to use it and to give design credits on my website. If this situation applies to you, then you may want to use example 1 or your version of it.
Example 3: Maybe you have a software program that organizes and catalogs your designs for you! If you do, then make sure you learn how to use it to its fullest potential. Ask your dealer for a software class or demonstration. You will be glad you have this software!
One thing to remember is always make backup copies of your designs to a Cd or an external hard drive or to both. You never know when a computer might crash leaving you with NO designs. All of your hard work gone is a matter of seconds and then you may need to re-purchase your designs if you did not retain your receipts! If you are in business for yourself, then you should make two back ups, one to keep at your business location and then one backup copy to keep in an offsite location for safekeeping.
Another topic for another day is "how" to make backups. For now an easy way is to burn your designs to a labeled cd, purchase an external hard drive (I have a 500gb external drive and that should be more than sufficient to hold all my designs at least for now LOL), or to utilize the Windows Back Up and Restore features on your computer.
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